Like a stolen afternoon in bed on a winter weekend, Filthy Rich is indulgent, naughty, luxurious and irresistible. Wendy Holden’s latest book is a slickly executed romp set during a summer in the country. Her eye for the nuances of class, and for the subtle yet primitive behaviour patterns of the English at home, has been honed with her seven previous novels, and here she directs a big cast onto the small stage of a village allotment scheme and puts them through their entertaining, if sometimes predictable, paces.

Mary and Monty are the down-at-heel but drop-dead gorgeous owners of the local stately home, aristocratic but clutching at straws for survival. Oddly, one of these straws is a desperate hope that Monty will become an explorer, a project which takes him to a sumptuous Notting Hill spare bedroom, thanks